


Second Contact

by Trismegistus_Shandy



Category: El Goonish Shive
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Don’t copy to another site, EGS Flash Fic Week 2019, F/F, Gen, Uryuom homeworld
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-05 05:10:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20483411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trismegistus_Shandy/pseuds/Trismegistus_Shandy
Summary: In a world where humans have had space travel for some centuries, and Uryuoms never developed it, Captain Ellen Dunkel and her crew think they've discovered a never-contacted sapient species.  But they soon discover that these shapeshifting aliens have met humans before.





	1. Chapter 1

“Captain!” said the ship’s AI, her holographic face popping up suddenly as the captain pulled her shoes off to get ready for bed. “My microdrone swarm has found something really cool down there!”

“What is it, Circe?” Captain Ellen Dunkel asked.

“The swarm just moved into a new area, that long peninsula at the southwest corner of the equatorial continent. And they picked up a transponder signal from an Earth ship! The _Flying Squirrel_, a private yacht that was reported lost thirty-one years ago, last seen nineteen point two light-years from here. It was registered to Dr. David Sciuridae, but my local records don’t say exactly who was aboard for that last flight. Shall I request more information from Earth?”

“Yes, please. Have you found the ship? How intact is it?”

“Badly damaged, but it looks like some of that damage happened after the crash — the local sapients have salvaged some materials from it. I’ve found two houses and a mill in the nearby village that are partly or wholly built with material from the spaceship. And!” she exclaimed, her eyes flashing, “I just found something even cooler! A human survivor!” A hologram of a dark-skinned human girl popped up in place of Circe’s face; she was wearing the same sort of loose robe the locals wore — when they wore clothes at all — and chatting with a local about two-thirds of her height, who was naked.

“Are you sure she’s not one of the locals shapeshifted to look like a human corpse they found in the wreckage, or a photo?”

“Her body temperature is 37.1C. The locals are consistently three degrees warmer, whatever form they’ve shifted into. There are some slight anomalies with her internal organs, but they seem to be within the range of human genetic variation.” Circe replaced the visual-spectrum holo with another that showed cutaways of both sapients' bones and organs, showing major differences — Captain Dunkel wasn’t anatomist enough to spot the anomalies Circe had mentioned, but it looked to her like the girl was human.

“Okay,” Ellen said. “Circe, direct my voice to everyone aboard on my mark. Circe has found a crashed human spacecraft and evidence of at least one survivor. We will be changing the destination of the first survey team to target the village where the human survivor was sighted. Circe’s drone swarm will continue to survey the area and inform us of any other survivors. Captain Dunkel out.”

* * *

Science Officer Tess Verres barged onto the bridge, her antennae quivering. “My team just woke up from a transformation coma,” she said, “and you’re telling me we’re going to a completely different place? We’re going to be the wrong ethnic group for that peninsula!”

“Yes, and you don’t really need to blend in that well, as it turns out,” Captain Dunkel said apologetically. “Turns out first contact happened thirty-one years ago, so it’s too late to worry about cultural contamination.” Tess and her survey team had spent the last three days in nanite tanks, being transformed into the semblance of the local sapients, or at least the default type of body they wore when not shapeshifting. The original plan had been to land their shuttle on an uninhabited island and travel by boat to an island which had had no contact with the mainland since the human explorers had started watching. “We’ve only sighted two human survivors, an old man who matches the photo Star Archive sent us of Dr. David Sciuridae, and a girl who looks a lot like his daughter Grace. We haven’t overheard any conversations in English between them, though; they’re always speaking the majority language of the peninsula. So you’ll have to get your language implant reprogrammed, but I don’t think you need to re-transform.”

Circe’s drones had been listening to tens of thousands of hours of conversation in various local languages, both on the island they’d originally planned to contact and in selected places on the populated continents. Just before she’d discovered the spaceship and the human girl, she’d been able to start translating the conversations they overheard on the original target island and program language implants for survey team. She still didn’t quite have enough data to translate the language of the peninsula where the Sciuridaes had crashed, but said she was getting close.

Tess paced around the bridge, deep in thought. “If they’ve already met humans, and presumably learned a significant amount about us, then there’s no reason not to land in human form. It would be rude to impersonate them if we don’t need to do it to prevent cultural contamination. Is there any indication that the — how do you pronounce that? — the Sciuridaes need immediate rescue?”

“No, they seem to have assimilated into the local culture, and we haven’t seen any evidence of war in this part of the continent, or even significant crime.”

“Then we’ll go back in the tanks and be human again. See you in three days.” As she walked off the bridge, Ellen could hear her musing, “Hmm, do I feel like being a man or a woman for the next few weeks?”

* * *

Finally, the survey team were human again and had their language implants programmed for the majority language spoken in the southwest peninsula. Tess and her team, Sarah Brown, Nanase Kitsune, and Susan Pompoms, boarded the shuttle and strapped in. Their pilot, Justin Tolkiberry, took them down.

He found the landing site they’d picked out, a fallow field of about thirty hectares adjacent to a field of some sort of grain and a field of a leafy vegetable crop, and settled down. “Here you go,” he said. “I’ll sit tight and be ready to take off in a hurry if you run into trouble.”

“Thanks, Justin,” Tess said. “Let’s go, ladies.” They disembarked from the shuttle and started walking toward the village where the drones had seen the Sciuridaes. They hadn’t gone far when they ran into some locals (they called themselves Uryuom in their language), a couple of adults and a child.

“Mama, they look like Grace!” the child piped up.

“Are you from Earth?” one of the adults asked. “Or one of the other human planets that David told us about?”

“Most of us are from Earth,” Tess said, and introduced herself and her team. “Nanase was born on New Hokkaido, one of our older colonies. How much has Dr. Sciuridae told you about the world he came from?”

“A lot. I suppose you’ll want to see him? I can lead you to his house.”

“That would be helpful, thank you. We’d also like to meet more of your people, including the leaders of your village.”

“Sure.”

After some brief consultation, one of the adults led the child, pouting and complaining, away toward the nearby farmhouse. The other, who introduced themselves as Oryuxuvoch, led the survey team into the village, where they quickly accumulated a crowd of onlookers.

“More humans?” — “When did they get here?” — “Where did their ship crash?” — “It landed on Oryuxuvoch’s farm, it didn’t crash.” — “Somebody go tell David and Grace!”

Their guide led them through the crowd, but before they reached their destination, the girl they’d seen holograms of burst out of the door of one of the houses up ahead, stared at them for a few moments over the heads of the shorter Uryuoms, then turned and called through the door, “Grandpa! Come see! There are people like us!” Without waiting for him to reply, she started jogging toward Tess and her team.

_She’s really pretty_, Tess thought, and pushed the unprofessional thought away. “Hello,” she said when the girl got close enough. “I’m Tess Verres of the _Lucky Bunny_, and this is my survey team.” She introduced them and said, “You must be Grace Sciuridae? And —” The old man they’d seen in the drone holos hobbled out of the house, supporting himself with a cane. He was the oldest-looking man Tess had ever seen outside a historical film. “Dr. Sciuridae.”

“How long have you been on Gollu?” Grace asked. “It took Grandpa and Mama two years to learn Uryuomoco after they crashed here.”

“We’ve been in orbit for thirty-eight days,” Tess said, “and just landed less than an hour ago.” If this wasn’t Dr. Sciuridae’s daughter but his granddaughter, who had the girl’s father been?

Grace’s jaw fell open in astonishment, and Tess was about to start explaining about AI language analysis, wondering what the girl’s grandfather had taught her about Earth technology and how much of their yacht’s systems had survived intact, when Dr. Sciuridae said, “Come on in and sit down. My knees don’t like walking too much, but I couldn’t sit still when I heard...”

“Of course,” Tess said, wincing in sympathy. “We can shuttle you up to our ship and let you use the nanite tank to rejuvenate.”

“That sounds great,” he said, leading them into the house and indicating several wooden chairs — all but two of which were sized for the Uryuoms. “The one we salvaged from my ship stopped working after just a couple of years.” Tess and her team sat down in the smaller chairs, leaving the human-sized chairs for Dr. Sciuridae and his granddaughter. Oryuxuvoch and a couple of other Uryuoms came in with them and sat down as well.

“David, if I may speak?” one of the other Uryuoms said.

“Of course, Levolg,” the old man said.

“I’m sure you and David have a lot to say to one another,” Levolg said, “and we can leave you alone for a few hours if you’d like, but when you’re done, my co-mayor Daryuu and I would like to speak with you about your intentions. Are you planning to stay long? Are other human ships going to be visiting regularly? Questions like that.”

“Of course,” Tess said. “That’s entirely up to your people. If you don’t want us here, we’ll leave, but if you’re willing, we can stay for up to three hundred and two of your days, and send other Earth ships to visit later on after we return home.”

“You’re welcome to stay,” Dr. Sciuridae said to the Uryuoms. Tess privately wished he’d let them go, because there were questions she’d like to ask about the local culture that might be easier to ask if the locals weren’t present and listening. But it would be rude to ask them to leave now.

They spent over an hour learning how Dr. Sciuridae and his daughter, Grace’s eventual mother, had crashed here and been rescued from the wreckage by the Uryuoms. After several years of learning the language and culture, Grace had fallen in love with two Uryuoms, Quurgol and Decokfymo, and they had included her DNA in their next baby.

“They used all three of their DNA and a little bit from a cwyllor, a local animal known for its agility and its cuteness,” Dr. Sciuridae explained, winking at Grace, who blushed. Tess had to agree about the cuteness, but this raised _so_ many questions...

“So they have advanced genetic engineering?” Susan asked. “I’m a bit surprised, given...” She gestured eloquently at the simple furnishings.

“Their theory is far more advanced than ours was when we hadn’t invented steam engines yet,” Dr. Sciuridae explained, “but most of their accomplishments in genetic engineering are due to their natural abilities...”

After somberly hearing the story of how Grace’s mother had died, and how Dr. Sciuridae had continued to live with his in-laws and granddaughter since then, and how Grace’s older half-siblings had moved out as they formed romantic partnerships while Grace stayed to take care of her ailing grandfather, Tess and her team shared the highlights of the last thirty-one years on Earth and its major colonies. About then, Sarah’s stomach started rumbling, followed a moment later by Tess’s. Dr. Sciuridae smiled. “Enough talk for now,” he said. “Let’s eat.”

“The soup should be almost ready,” Grace said. “Mom should be home for lunch any minute.”

Another Uryuom, whom Grace introduced as her mom Decokfymo, arrived while she was serving her guests bowls of soup. Tess and her team didn’t inquire about what was in it; obviously the Sciuridaes had figured out what local foods were safe for them to eat years ago, or they would have died.

“Mmmm!” Tess said. “This is amazing!”

“Thank you,” Grace said, beaming. “I came up with the recipe. It’s based on a traditional recipe from the north, but I tweaked it with different spices and substituted guleh for kegugeh.”

After everyone had taken the edge off their hunger, Levolg suggested they talk business. Tess let Nanase and Susan handle most of this discussion, finding her mind wandering a lot, and her eyes drifting back again and again to Grace, who was listening raptly to the conversation. This would be a long mission; they’d probably stay a full Earth year, as long as regs allowed, before going back to Earth. Tess hoped they’d spend a lot of that time right here. And then, maybe...

Tess shook her head. What was she thinking? Grace had grown up here, and all her family and friends were here, except maybe some distant relatives she’d never met. She’d never want to migrate to Earth. Maybe visit someday, but...

All that could wait. Tess returned her attention to what Nanase and Levolg were saying, managing to only glance at Grace once every four or five minutes.

* * *

After a couple of hours of conversation, in which they learned a lot more about the nations and political structures of the southwestern peninsula than they’d been able to figure out from the recorded conversations, and got Levolg’s promise to escort them to the capital of this nation and introduce them to its leaders, Tess asked where one went to relieve themselves. Grace got up and said, “I’ll show you.”

As Tess had known to expect from the drone recordings, Grace showed her to an outhouse about eight meters behind the house. Tess went in, finding to her surprise that it didn’t smell particularly strongly — maybe the Uryuoms' genetic engineering at work, some sort of bacteria living down there that ate human and Uryuom excretions and produced something less noxious? After she did her business and emerged, she found, to her surprise, that Grace was still outside waiting for her.

“I wanted to ask you a question,” Grace said. “I didn’t want to interrupt, though.”

“Of course,” Tess replied. “What is it?”

“You said something about taking my grandpa up to your ship? And making him young again?”

“Yes, we can do that. We won’t take him any farther than low orbit over your planet,” she hastily reassured her, “unless he wants to go with us to Earth or any other human-inhabited planet along our route.”

“Could I go, too?”

“Yes, of course. Do you want to come with us to Earth, or just visit our ship with your grandfather?”

“No — maybe — I just wanted to know if it was allowed,” Grace said in a rush. “If Grandpa is going to be young and healthy again, then he can work again, and I won’t be needed here. I can finally move out. And — well, Grandpa has told me so much about Earth, and Mars, and Boondock; I’d like to see them if I can.”

“Boondock is on the far side of Earth from here, so we won’t be stopping there on the way home, but we can certainly take you to Earth, and from there you can visit Mars without much trouble. And Boondock shouldn’t be much harder, though it will take more time — we can show you how to post a hitchhiking request, and then you’d just wait until there’s a ship heading that way with room for another passenger and your number comes up. If you learn enough in the meantime, you can offer yourself as crew, and potentially have a shorter wait.”

“What about coming back to Gollu?” Grace asked. “Would it be the same way — post a, um, a hitchhiking request and waiting for my turn?”

“You’d have priority passage in any ship that’s going this way — anybody returning to their homeworld gets priority over those going sightseeing. But there probably won’t be as many ships coming this way in the next few years as there usually are going to Boondock. I’m sure another expedition here will be planned as soon as we return, if not sooner, but it still might not leave for several months.”

“When do I have to decide and let you know?”

“Any time before we leave the planet.”

Grace looked thoughtful. “Thank you. I think I’ll probably come. Three hundred days will give me plenty of time to say goodbye to my parents and brothers and sister and friends.”

Tess had already decided she was taking a sabbatical as soon as they returned to Earth. “I’ll be happy to show you around Earth,” she said. “And any other planets you’d like to visit.”

“Yay!” And with that, Grace hugged her. Tess had known intellectually that hugging was a common custom on the peninsula, but it still came as a wonderful surprise.


	2. Chapter 2

“So this is your ship?” Grace asked. Two locks of her bangs were curling up and waving in the air toward the shuttle like the antennae of the full-blooded Uryuoms. Tess nudged that fascinating phenomenon aside for later investigation and replied,

“No, it’s just a ship’s longboat.” That was the closest concept Uryuomoco had to _shuttle_. “Good for going up and down between a planet and an orbiting ship, but it would have a hard time going just as far as the next planet in your solar system, and coudn’t go to another solar system at all. Our real ship is up in orbit. If we stayed until... um... around an hour after dark, you could see it overhead looking like a fast-moving star.”

“Neat!”

“Well, come aboard, everyone,” Tess added as the shuttle hatch opened and the stairs extended to the ground. “Our pilot, Justin, will explain the safety features and we’ll help make sure you’re all buckled in before he starts the takeoff checklist.” (The word she used in Uryuomoco to describe Justin’s pilot role normally referred to a ship’s helmsman; she tacked on an augmentative suffix, more to be impressive than because she thought it was really needed for clarity.)

Tess wound up, not by a conscious effort, sitting next to Grace. Her grandfather, whose untreated aging required extra precautions to go through takeoff acceleration safely, was immersed in an acceleration gel pod (usually used for the severely injured), with Susan, the survey team’s medic, next to him. Co-mayor Levolg and Grace’s mother Decokfymo sat with with Sarah and Nanase. When Justin took off, Tess watched Grace’s face for her reaction. Grace’s hair-antennae quivered excitedly and her face took on a look of shock followed quickly by glee as the ship rose through the atmosphere. (There were no windows, but while Justin was going through the checklist, Tess had shown Grace how to bring up a hologram view of the exterior.)

“This is so neat!” Grace enthused. “How fast are we going?”

“Here,” Tess said, and manipulated the holo-display to show the shuttle’s velocity and acceleration. “We’re going a kilometer and a half per second and constantly going faster. By the time we get free of your planet’s gravity...”

* * *

Tess had promised Grace, Levolg, and Decokfymo a tour of the ship (after clearing it with Captain Dunkel), but their first stop after decontamination was the nanite tanks.

“You’re sure you just want a simple rejuvenation?” asked Dr. Raven.

He nodded. “I experimented enough with different body types when I was young. A young, healthy version of this is all I need.”

Susan set up a privacy screen for Dr. Sciuridae to undress behind, and Dr. Raven began programming the tank.

“What _else_ can you do with the nanite tanks besides make someone young or heal them when they get hurt or sick?” Grace asked.

“You can change your body in all kinds of ways. If you’re staying the same size and changing only a little, like making your hair or skin a different color, you can be in and out in an hour. If you want to change something that affects every part of your body, like your sex, it can take almost a day, again assuming you’re not making yourself bigger or smaller. If you want to get bigger or smaller... well, I think the record is ninety-eight days when someone used a specially built tank to change themselves into a blue whale.”

Levolg made a gesture with their antennae that Grace’s language implant interpreted as the equivalent of a nod. “If we want to get bigger or smaller, it takes longer than regular shapeshifting, and we have to eat or poop extra for a time.”

Tess reflected that a shapeshifting species might have a head start on discovering the law of conservation of mass. One more item on the long list of topics to investigate...

Grace looked speculatively at the other nanite tanks. “Could I maybe use the tank while I’m up here, too? See, I can’t shapeshift as much as my Uryuom parents and siblings. I only have about three forms I can shift between, and it’s harder for me to shift than for them, so I don’t shift all that much.”

“Of course,” Captain Dunkel said as she walked into the room. Tess figured she’d been listening to the converation through her ear implant while she walked here; she’d evidently gotten the Uryuomoco language patch for her language implant. “Just let Dr. Raven know what you want.”

“I’ll think about it,” Grace said. “There’s so many things I’d like to try!”

They continued the tour, Captain Dunkel leading the way and doing most of the talking for a while. Tess again found herself distracted, this time by thoughts of Grace taking on various forms. Lighter or darker, heavier or more muscular or leaner, different hair colors and lengths, other sexes, different sizes...

The tour finished up on the bridge.

“And there you have it,” said Captain Dunkel, gesturing dramatically. “Any more questions?”

“If you don’t mind,” Levolg said, “we’d like a quiet place to rest, eat and discuss what we’ve seen. I understand it will take a few hours for David to be rejuvenated, and we can’t return home until after that?”

“Circe, how long is Dr. Sciuridae’s rejuvenation going to last?” Captain Dunkel asked.

“Another sixteen and a half hours,” Circe replied in Uruomoco, popping up a hologram of her face and startling Grace and the other guests. “He’s six kilograms underweight, and suffering from several mineral deficiencies, probably due to different amounts of various elements in Gollu’s crust compared to Earth’s. Not a large difference, but over thirty-one years, it adds up to several serious health issues. Grace, Dr. Raven wants to see you soon to figure out if you have the same deficiencies or if your partial Uryuom heritage has protected you from that.”

“Oh!” Grace said. “I haven’t ever been very sick. Not like Grandpa.”

“Then you’re probably okay, but Dr. Raven wants to check you out anyway. There’s no hurry; you can rest and eat with your mother and Levolg first if you want.”

“Okay,” Grace said, glancing at her mother. “I guess I’ll do that.”

* * *

After showing the guests to a room where they could have some privacy to eat and talk, Tess returned to her work, analyzing the data they’d collected in Grace’s village and collating it with the data Circe’s drone swarm had been gathering in various places around Gollu. At first she was distracted by thoughts of Grace, but after fifteen minutes of looking over Circe’s chemical and genetic analyses of some of the more common plants and animals, she got engrossed in the science and became sharply focused. Some hours later, she was startled when Circe popped up and said, “Tess, Grace is outside your quarters and would like to talk with you.”

“Oh! Open the door, please.” Her heart was pounding, she realized. It slid open as Circe’s face disappeared, and Tess said to Grace, “Come on in,” in Uryuomoco.

Grace stepped in and said, “Hi. I, um, I wanted to ask your advice about what to change into when I go in the nanite tank. What do you usually use it for?”

“Well,” Tess said, “when I’m using it for fun, I usually just change my sex without changing my mass or height very much. I figure I’m female about sixty percent of the time, male about twenty-five percent and various designer sexes, or a mix of different sexes, around thirty-five percent.”

Circe’s voice sounded in her ear, but her hologram didn’t appear. “Do you want updated statistics to give her?”

“No, thanks,” Tess subvocalized, and added aloud to Grace, “And then for work, I’m usually changing into a tougher-skinned form with nicitating membranes that is less likely to suffer injuries from lab experiments going wrong. Although I still wear protective gear. _Belt and suspenders_,” she added in English, realizing too late that Uryuomoco didn’t have a close equivalent idiom. “I mean, I like to take extra precautions... uh, like using two different tethers tied to different trees to keep your felco from wandering off.” She realized she was babbling on irrelevantly and added quickly: “And sometimes I take on a form that can breathe water to explore lakes or oceans on different planets we’re surveying.”

“That would be so cool!” Grace said. “Can you explain more about the different sexes? I know Mama was female, and so am I, when I’m in this form, and Grandpa is male, but you mentioned something about designer sexes?”

“Oh, right. Well, before the nanite tanks, humans basically came in three types, with the first two about equally common and the third a lot rarer: male, female, and intersex. But after the nanite tanks came along, and especially after using them to modify yourself in unusual ways became more socially acceptable, people started inventing new sex organs or configurations of the traditional ones, and designing body and facial types to go with them, and new ways to combine both the new and traditional ones that didn’t occur in naturally-born intersex people. Dr. Raven can tell you more about how that happened, I mean about how it gradually became acceptable and then became a popular fad for a decade or so and then dropped off again to where only people who aren’t satisfied with male or female bodies and variations and combinations of them use designer sexes. All that was before I was born.

“Anyway, I like being gative fairly often, or a mix of gative and female, and I have a special fondness for prash, which I invented myself, although after wearing that kind of body almost half the time in the first couple of years after I invented it, I found I usually prefer female, male or gative. And in my teens, I tried over fifty sexes at least once, but most of them only for a day or two; there are another three sexes that I liked enough to come back to once in a while.”

“Okay,” Grace said, after silently processing that for a few moments. “I want to be prash.”

“But — I haven’t even explained what prash is yet —!” Tess felt her face getting hot.

“It must be interesting,” she said. “Maybe you can tell me more about it on the way to the clinic?”

“S-sure,” Tess said, getting up and leading the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I planned for chapter one to be a stand-alone short story, but after some commenters asked me to continue it, I had some hopefully interesting ideas about what could happen next (which I usually don't when people ask me for sequels). I think there will probably be at least one more chapter, but I'm not sure how many after that.


	3. Chapter 3

Tess had never had any trouble discussing the clinical details of prash or other designer sexes, back when she was more active on the designer forums and chat rooms. Fat/muscle ratios, areas and densities of hair growth, facial and body structures, design and placement of of sex organs, qualia of arousal and orgasm... all were technical minutiae she and the other designers could geek out over.

But now, having to tell a girl she liked about the sex she’d designed back in her teens — a girl who had immediately decided to try out being prash within minutes of learning that there were options beyond male and female, _just because Tess had designed it_ — she found herself tongue-tied. She started out by saying, “Well, it’s a sex with a higher proportion of body fat in most areas than a typical female body, except that, ah, it only has one breast, centered a little lower than most female’s breasts, and that one’s typically a lot broader and a little shallower than what the same person would have if they were female. And the hair patterns...”

But when she came describing to the sex organs, which she’d placed in the armpits, the other erogenous zones (the belly, elbows and knees), the qualia of arousal (like smelling popcorn from several rooms away, getting tantalizingly closer) or orgasm (like hot peppers modulo milk raised to the power of a crashing cymbal), she couldn’t make herself speak plainly.

“Oh,” she added, after floudering for a bit, “and all prash are tetrachromats. But these days pretty much all female bodies are tetrachromat, too, and a lot of males. I don’t know what your color vision is like... we haven’t really explored what Uryuom vision is like yet. Do you see different colors than your grandfather or your Uryuom parents or half-siblings?”

That proved a fruitful and much less embarassing digression that kept them occupied until they reached the medbay and the nanite tanks. Dr. Raven was off duty; Susan was checking the readings on one of the tanks as they arrived.

“Hi!” Grace said. “I want to be prash, please.”

“And she also needs to be tested for those mineral deficiencies Dr. Raven found in her grandfather,” Tess added, “and have them fixed if necessary.”

“Right,” Susan said, “I’ve got his notes on that here. We don’t get much call for prash; I’ll have to look up the parameters —”

“I have them ready for you,” Circe’s voice said.

“Thanks, Circe,” Susan said. “All right, we have a free nanite tank over this way.” She started setting up a privacy screen around it, and asking Grace questions about her preferences.

“See you in a few hours,” Grace said, and hugged Tess again.

“Y-yeah,” Tess said, feeling hot. “See you then.”

* * *

Tess went back to work, but couldn’t concentrate; she kept obsessively checking the time. Grace’s transformation should take about twenty-one hours, since she’d chosen to stay the same mass. Two of those hours had passed by the time she finally managed to focus on the genetic sequence of one of the more interesting plants Circe’s drones had sampled. She worked steadily for several hours, consulting with Circe and her colleagues from time to time, then went to the dining hall for supper, and worked for a while afterward before going to bed.

By the time she got up, Dr. Sciuridae had emerged from the nanite tank, young and healthy again. He was in the dining hall, eating with Captain Dunkel, Dr. Raven, and Chief Engineer Tensaided when Tess arrived for breakfast. Levolg and Decokfymo were at the table too, but not eating, and Circe’s hologram was “sitting” there as well, floating cross-legged just above the table; she was speaking when Tess approached the table with her plate.

“My drones have been tracking the courier Levolg sent to the capital, and they’re still safe and making good time. At this rate they’ll get there in three more local days.”

Captain Dunkel nodded. “And after they have time to give their message to the royal polycule, we’ll land a shuttle outside the capital. Levolg and Decokfymo, I hope you’ll go along with the envoys to meet with the royals. If you prefer not to, we can return you to your village —”

“I’ll go to the capital,” Levolg said. “We discussed that earlier.” But Decokfymo lowered her antennae in negation.

“I need to get back to my work in the village. David, what will you do?”

“My long-term plans partly depend on what Grace decides,” Dr. Sciuridae replied, “but for now, I’m going to the capital with the envoys. They’ll need someone who understands their culture as well as yours. Although none of us are experts in court etiquette, my daughter and I were presented at court many years ago, before Grace was hatched, and I remember most of the protocol coaching we received beforehand.”

“Tess,” Captain Dunkel said, “let’s meet after breakfast and go over your plans for your next trip down. I figure we’ll send Nanase with the envoys to the capital, while you, Sarah and Susan can go back to the village with Decokfymo and continue the survey in that area.”

“Of course,” Tess said, wondering whether Grace would want to go to the capital with her grandfather or return to her village.

* * *

By the time Tess was finished with her meeting with Captain Dunkel, and checked with Circe again, she found that Grace’s transformation had 8.9 hours to go. She sighed and got back to work, going over plans for the next trip planetside with Sarah and Susan. What further questions did they have after studying the data collected so far?

Finally, as she’d requested, Circe told her that Grace had emerged from the nanite tank and was cleaning up and getting dressed. Tess made her way to the medbay and arrived just as Grace came out from behind the privacy partition.

“Hi, Tess! What do you think?”

After Tess took in the stunning sight of prash Grace, and picked up her jaw off the floor, she managed to get a few words out. “You look great,” she said, then realized that might sound like bragging, as she’d designed the sex Grace was wearing. “I mean, you make my work look good. Better than it looks on me, or most of the other people I’ve seen photos of.”

Grace smiled broadly, her more-rounded face with its fine curly sideburns a shade lighter than her scalp hair framing the smile adorably. “Thanks! So what all’s been happening while I was in the tank? Anything interesting?”

“We’ve been getting ready to go back down to Gollu,” Tess explained. “Once the courier gets to the capital —”

“Excuse us,” Dr. Raven said. “I need to speak with Grace for a few minutes.”

“Oh, of course. Grace, when you’re done, you can ask Circe to guide you to me, okay? Or to your mom or grandfather, if you want to see them first.”

“See you soon!” Grace waved and turned to talk to Dr. Raven, and Tess left the medbay.

She had barely had time to start trying to work again when Circe told her Grace was there. “Come in,” she said, and the door opened to admit Grace.

“So what are the plans?”

“Well, after the courier gets to the capital and tells the authorities we’re coming, some of us will be going to see the royal polycule and talk about the same sort of things we discussed with Levolg and Daryuu. How long we’re welcome to stay, what we’re going to do during the rest of our stay, how soon we or other ships from human planets can come back, possible things we might trade. The shuttle is going to stop at your village before going to the capital, and it’ll drop off your mom, Sarah, Susan, and me there, then take your grandfather, Levolg, Captain Dunkel, and some others to the capital. You can go with either group, whichever you prefer.”

“I’d like to see the capital and meet the royals,” Grace said. “But... you said you’ll be going back to the village with my mom?”

“Yes,” Tess said. “Since the people in your area are more used to humans, we figure it will be best to spend more time there, getting used to the way Uryuoms do things, before we go out and explore the rest of the planet and meet Uryuoms who’ve never seen or heard of humans.”

Grace nodded. “That makes sense. But you said we wouldn’t be going down until the courier gets to the capita?”

“Right. Circe estimated they’d get there in three more days — well, more like two now, that was this morning.” When Grace didn’t say anything more right away, curling her hair-like antennae in thought, Tess spoke up again to fill the silence: “You don’t have to decide right away — any time up until an hour before we board the shuttle should be fine. And — I guess I’d advise you to go to the capital with your grandfather. You shouldn’t pass up the opportunity.”

“Yeah,” Grace said. “I guess so. But I wanted to ask you more about this body, now that I’m actually wearing it.”

“Sure,” Tess said cautiously. “Um, remind me what I told you already... and what Dr. Raven told you, if he said anything...?”

“He said I didn’t have the same amount of missing minerals in my body as Grandpa did, but I did have a little, so he’s having some artificial nuts made for us to eat. I’m supposed to eat one every five days and Grandpa is supposed to eat two a day.” Tess wasn’t sure what she meant until she realized that Uryuomoco had no word for “pill,” and Dr. Raven or Circe had settled on the equivalent of “artificial nut” to describe the mineral supplements they were synthesizing.

“Oh, that’s good,” Tess said distractedly. “He didn’t say anything about your new body otherwise?”

“No. Here, let me show you which parts I’m curious about.” And without pausing for Tess to reply, she took off her robe. She wasn’t wearing anything under it; a prash cloaca didn’t have the leakage that a baseline female body’s vagina sometimes did, and a typical prash breast didn’t need support like baseline female breasts. And with the way her arms were raised above her head, exposing her armpits... Tess blushed and averted her eyes.

“Why are you looking away? How can I point out which parts I don’t understand if you’re not looking at me?”

“S-sorry,” Tess said. “You just startled me, that’s all. Okay, which parts do you want to know more about?”

“...You're still not looking at me.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first post on AO3, but I've been posting fiction (mostly TG transformation fiction) online under this byline since 2007. My work can be found on Shifti.org, DeviantArt, BigCloset, and TGStorytime among other places. 
> 
> Thanks to Zee McZed for starting the EGS Flash Week.


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